More Than Words: Pronouns Pt. 3 – They Said/Ze Said

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of More Than Words, where I take queer words of all sorts and smash them apart and see what makes them tick. Every week I’ll be dissecting a different word, trying to figure out where it came from, how it has evolved, where it might be going, and what it all means. It’s like reading the dictionary through a prism. Feel free to send word suggestions to cara@autostraddle.com.

Over the last few More Than Words-es, we’ve taken a look at English pronouns past and present —specifically where they came from, and how “he” and “she” got to be gendered in the first place even as the rest of the language isn’t anymore. This week, we’re looking ahead at potential Pronouns Yet To Come, as well as some that, despite valiant efforts from all kinds of people with all kinds of motives, have (so far) fallen through the cracks.

There are three main reasons people want English to adopt a gender-neutral third-person pronoun (or, while we’re at it, a few of them): grammatical, political and personal. Luckily for me, these line up pretty chronologically. We’ll start way back in the 18th century, when grammarians first sought to alleviate their suffering with pill-sized linguistic concoctions.

Earlier English speakers felt the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun acutely because it was a recent loss. In Middle English, “a” was a kind of catchall pronoun, used, by everyone from Shakespeare to John Trevisa (English Language Original Gangster), “for he, she, it, they, and even I.” “A” eventually evolved into “ou,” which was pronounced “oo” and is still used in some places. But by the late 18th century, these were rare or localized enough that copyeditors, lawyers, and policemen — tired of rearranging their sentences, violating the rules of grammar by using “they,” being unable to arrest people (“I don’t believe I could arrest a woman on that law… the masculine pronoun does not specifically include women”), or settling for “inelegant and bungling” constructions like “one’s” — had tried their hand at neologizing. John Williams, who manages an amazing database of gender-neutral pronouns, gives us an idea of what we’re dealing with here:

“Besides the centuries-old instinctive use of “their”, people have been formally concerned about the gendered pronoun problem since at least 1795, and have been coining new pronouns for about the last century and a half. The first, sometime around 1850, were “ne, nis, nim”, and “hiser”. In 1868, “en” appeared, followed by a rush in 1884: “thon, thons”, “hi, hes, hem”, “le, lis, lim”, “unus”, “talis”, “hiser, himer”, “hyser, hymer”, and “ip, ips”… Many more coinings followed between 1888 and 1891, then interest died for two decades.”

Dennis Baron, who literally wrote the book on the topic and keeps a more detailed chronological list, dug up some good stories about particular attempts. During the Great Epicene Era that was 1884, Charles Crozat Converse, a jack of weird trades (lawyer, hymn writer, amateur linguist) aimed to form “a certain lingual abbreviation and compound” from “English word elements and sounds, which are already in common use,” in order to preserve “the beautiful symmetry of the English tongue” and provide an alternative for the “common, yet hideous, solecisms” he was forced to lean on in his lawyerly work. His creation, “thon” (a blend of “they” and “one”) enjoyed a brief period of popularity, making it into the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary (1936) as “a proposed genderless pronoun.” But English-speakers never really took the ring, and by the time Webster’s third edition came out in 1961, “thon” was nowhere to be found, and Charles Converse’s enduring legacy was, instead, the tune of “What A Friend We Have In Jesus.” Perhaps we can revive it by holding a Thon-A-Thon.

Many others tried their hands. In 1884, Charles P. Sherman wrote in to a periodical called The Literary World to promote the usage of “hiser” or “hyser,” as in “every man and woman is the architect of hyser own fortune.” A 1912 issue of the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review reported that someone named Ella Flagg Young had successfully spearheaded the appointment of a committee “to confer with the legislative delegation asking use of the words his-er, him-er and he-er instead of his or her, him or her, and he or she” in the local public school. In 1940, author A.A. Milne, in Christopher Robin’s Birthday Book, suggested “heesh,” as in “If John and Mary come, heesh will want to play tennis.” His other indeterminate creations (such as heffalumps and talking bears) were far more successful.

Political

Not everyone was concerned primarily with ease of use — some also saw an opportunity to undo an inherently sexist practice. As we talked about a few weeks ago, “he” had been an acceptable fallback for uncertain pronoun situations officially since the late 18th century, and unofficially for centuries before that. Gender and linguistics expert Anne Curzan postulates that “he” became common because “most literate people would have been men… when people were talking about a generic clerk, or a generic writer, what they had in their head was actually a man.” So societal inequality led to unbalanced language as well. And it was more than just implied — Maria Bustillos over at The Awl explains brilliantly how, in the 19th century, men used pronouns “as weapons” to keep women from voting, holding office, or passing the bar by writing legislation with the generic “he” and then pretending it had been specific all along (when Susan B. Anthony argued that only “he” had to pay taxes as well, the case was thrown out). People attempted to change this starting way back — Baron cites an editorial in the Memphis Free Trade circa 1882 that explains how “there is wanting in the English language a singular pronoun for either gender” and assigns its creation to “woman’s rights women,” as “the use of “he” when “she” may be meant is an outrage upon the dignity, and an encroachment upon the rights, of woman. It is quite as important that they should stand equal with men in the grammars as before the law.”

“I INSIST IF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS MAY THUS MANIPULATE THE PRONOUNS TO TAX, FINE, IMPRISON, AND HANG WOMEN, WOMEN MAY TAKE THE SAME LIBERTY WITH THEM TO SECURE TO THEMSELVES THEIR RIGHT TO A VOICE IN THE GOVERNMENT.” – SUSAN ANTHONY

The real boom hit along with the rest of second-wave feminism, around 1970. In Slate’s Lexicon Valley podcast, Mike Vuolo tells the story of how, in 1971, several Harvard Divinity School students found a way to express their dissatisfaction with their professor’s tendency to generalize using the words “man,” and “mankind.” He quotes Newsweek’s contemporary coverage: “every time anyone in the room lapsed into what the students regarded as male chauvinism, such as using the word ‘mankind’ to describe the human race in general, the outraged women drowned out the offender with ear-piercing blasts from party favor kazoos.” This tactic didn’t garner great results, but it did provoke an answer from the linguistic’s department, who jointly wrote to the Harvard Crimson explaining the grammatical concept of marked and unmarked members and assuring them that “the fact that the masculine is the unmarked gender in English is simply a feature of grammar. There is really no cause for anxiety or pronoun envy on the part of those seeking changes.” (Other experts at the time were more sympathetic.)

A few months later, in the inaugural standalone issue of Ms. magazine, Casey Miller and Kate Smith published a manifesto called “De-Sexing the English Language,” in which they argued for a pronoun that could “accomodate the new recognition of women as full-fledged members of the human race,” and so be “politically smart, morally right,” grammatically sound, and not awkward (they suggested “tey/ter/tem”). Eventually, realizing that it is nearly impossible to effectively engineer a new word into English — particularly one that would be used so commonly as, say, “tey” — some feminists, particularly those in academia, instead began advocating for the generic “she,” or for alternating pronouns. As nothing has yet caught on in any real, large way, everyone will have to just keep doing them(/tem/zem/hysem). For example, Anne Curzan uses the singular “they” and makes sure to footnote its first appearance in each of her academic papers in order to explain herself. Young people in Baltimore are trying to make “yo” happen. And all of Sweden just hatched “hen.”

WHEN ASKED TO FILL IN THIS CARTOON, 47 OF 115 BALTIMORE STUDENTS USED “YO,” EX. “YO IS A STRAIGHT CLOWN” OR “YO SUCKS AT MAGIC TRICKS” (VIA NPR)

Personal

And then there are those of us who have a more personal investment in this particular word problem — trans*, genderqueer, or otherwise identified individuals for whom the existing, binary-aligned pronouns just don’t seem right. I spoke to a few nonbinary Autostraddle readers about their personal experiences with different ones. The search for the right way to refer to yourself is so different from the search for a grammatical or political fix. And while a universal gender-neutral pronoun can only be considered successful if it outcompetes all other contenders, there could technically be infinite, equally salient personal alternative gender pronouns.

Em, who goes by they/them/their, chose their pronoun because it was already something people were used to saying: “I already get enough shit about my gender being “made up”, “pretend”, “a delusion”, or “invented” (all actual things I have been told),” they said, “I don’t need pronouns helping me internalize that!” Ronan also uses they, for more personal reasons: “One thing I did and would recommend to anyone struggling with decision fatigue over pronouns is this: say them out loud to yourself and practice it often; if you don’t like the way it sounds in your mouth, then don’t use it for yourself.” Jesse uses “they” because it has “a lovely ring of rightness to it,” and Leigh, who uses “ze/hir,” chose it because ze loves “the way this pronoun set nestles phonetically between she/her and he/his – it sounds like they all fit and belong together… [it’s] the one that jumped out as somehow aligning to me in a way she/her never did. It’s comfortable.”

Everyone I talked to described how difficult it was to ask others to refer to them by their preferred pronouns, as even people who are otherwise down with queer causes are often unsympathetic to this one: “How can anyone be comfortable asking for non-binary pronouns when even people in our community and those who love us find it to be an annoying, unnecessary burden?” asks Jordan, who would prefer to go by “ey/em/eir,” but has had trouble actualizing this. Cameron, who also used to go by “ey/em/eir,” found that even though he chose this particular pronoun specifically because it seemed easy for others to remember and use, “no one was willing to learn… If I were to ask people to refer to me with the pronoun, I’d basically be asking them to become non-binary pronoun educators and evangelists on my behalf. My shyness overcame my desire to have my identity recognized.” Even when he found someone who was eager to call him the right thing, socialization got in the way — “zie couldn’t think in Spivak fast enough to actually incorporate it verbally.” Cameron eventually switched to male pronouns and says it was “a good decision.”

Others who have stuck it out say that the good experiences they’ve had feel so great, it makes up for all the difficulty. Those I talked to used the phrases “absolutely giddy with joy,” “so completely happy,” and “I want to hug anyone who [refers to me correctly].” “I could give you a precise list of every single genderstraight ally I’ve ever witnessed using my pronoun correctly, that’s how much it means to me,” said Jesse. All believe that with time, experience, and increased visibility, the rest of the world will come around. Ronan points out that if we can adopt “LOL,” we can change the way we use “they,” and Jesse also has high hopes for singular “they” (“it’s not really radical grammar if Shakespeare used it”).

As Leigh put it, “overall, I think it’s less a question of the English language dealing with a problem and more a question of people dealing with how they use the tool that is the English language. There’s a lot of power in language! And it’s not locked in the existing grammar; it’s located in the people who decide how they will use it.” Maybe the key to finally canonizing that ever-elusive gender-neutral pronoun belongs to the people who want to use it for themselves.

Cara is a writing reading bicycling fiend and a lab mouse to the world. Sometimes she's also Hat Benatar. She lives in Jamaica Plain with five cool roommates and an ice cream machine, and is generally thinking about gender, words, sustainable biodiversity, and/or electric guitars. You can follow her on twitter @cjgiaimo if you want.

As someone who knows a lot of intellectually disabled people and people whose second language is English, I’m pretty used to pronouns going everywhere. (I can usually figure out who’s being talked about, but the whole filling in from context thing is probably a skill learned from compensating for bad auditory processing so most people don’t have this superpower.)

I am a big fan of they, though. It’s recognizable and understandable, and it’s simple! I’ve seen it used a lot as the default for people who can’t do more pronouns and it’s p. awesome. *hisses at all the prescriptivists*

I always used they as singular from when I was little. I don’t know why. It wasn’t until secondary school that people started challenging me on it and I consciously started working at not doing it anymore. I think it would be much easier for people to use the word that way than to learn a whole new set of pronouns. Apart from anything else it would be much easier to ease into the language without being to jarring.

Totally. It’s important to encourage it, too. I teach English conversation to Japanese kids, and now despite it not being in my curriculum, I make it a POINT to teach it whenever we have a lesson using gendered pronouns.

People have been using singular “they” for literally centuries, classic literary authors included. Unfortunately the prescriptivists have been noisy enough about their displeasure to stop it from being widely accepted as anything other than informal.

Cameron’s point about willing native English speakers not being able to think fast enough, consciously, to use Spivak interests me. I know this is about the peculiarities of gender in English, but other languages have additional grammatical choices that need to be made, consciously and deliberately, which makes me wonder if non-native English speakers (that is, both ESL speakers and non-English speakers) would have an easier time with this kind of neologistic pronouns.

For example, in French you have to make a handful of determinations to figure out which pronoun to use: male or female? Group or individual? Younger or older than you? More important or less important in social stature? Formal or informal setting? One generally uses the more formal pronoun if in doubt, or — and this is the fascinating part — until explicitly invited by the party you’re addressing to use the less formal form. There’s a specific verb and everything: tutoyer, to address someone with the familiar “tu” instead of the formal “vous.”

Since this tidbit constitutes the depth and breadth of my knowledge of French grammar theory, any francophone Straddlers have any thoughts? Are foreign languages/their speakers any more flexible toward non-standard pronouns than English?

I speak Chinese reasonably well, and all third-person pronouns sound the same, /ta1/. Written, they are divided into masculine/feminine/animal/inanimate/divine.

I know a bit of ASL, though I am hearing and also a beginning student, pronouns there are just pointing with the index finger for the singular, and gesturing towards the person/thing (or the space designated in that conversation to stand for the person/thing) with a flat palm for the plural. Honestly, even for spoken language, pointing is so useful; I have no idea why people have designated pointing as rude. (lol NT social skills etc)

Unfortunately I have no idea what spivak is so I’m not sure why I’m replying but I’ve already typed it, so oh well.

I’m glad you did reply! That’s exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about, so thank you! And fyi, Spivak refers to one (or several? Not sure) set(s) of non-gendered pronouns. And I learned the term from the article. So don’t feel bad. : ).

In my experience non-native speakers of English have a harder time with pronouns, simply because the rules are so different. In Malay, for example, there’s only 2 pronouns: ‘dia’ for people and ‘ia’ for everything else. No gendered pronouns. It’s pretty common for ESL speakers to mix up pronouns, and adding non-standard pronouns can get extra confusing.

This is why I tend to give people the side-eye when they claim that anyone mispronouning them must always be coming from malice or apathy. There doesn’t seem to be much compassion for people who are already struggling with the slipperiness of the English language. (People deliberately disrespecting your pronoun choice is another matter but I feel those two groups get lumped together a lot.) Also honestly if the worst thing that can ever happen to you is that someone messes up your pronoun then you have it good.

“Also honestly if the worst thing that can ever happen to you is that someone messes up your pronoun then you have it good.”

Did you honestly just say that? Well, first of all, let’s be real, while not necessarily in the same danger as a binary trans woman of color, non-binary and genderqueer people who are out in their communities face abuse, violence, homelessness, joblessness, and discrimination so that’s NOT the worst that could ever happen to one of us.

But further, people repeatedly mispronouning you is a constant act of misgendering and dehumanization. It’s telling the person that their identity is either not real or worthless and that the individual doesn’t care about you as a person enough to respect your gender and pronouns. You’ve just made a perfect example of why some of the people above don’t trust the other LGBT people who should be our friends and allies.

Sure, a non-native English speaker should get some extra wiggle room with learning pronouns. That should be true even if your gender falls into the binary because a lot of languages don’t use gendered pronouns at all. But for a native English speaker to repeatedly misgender you IS malicious. If it happens once, that’s not surprising at all because people have been raised with certain binary gendered assumptions but after the 5th time or the 20th time, it’s an attack.

If a native English speaker meets a cis woman and she introduces herself and they refer to her as he over and over and over, it’s an insult. The same if the meet a trans woman. If they refer to her as he, that’s an insult to her as person and to her identity. So if someone meets me, and I explain politely that I use they pronouns and they continue to call me a woman or refer to me with she or to use a name that I’ve repeatedly told them I do not use, it’s an insult. It’s that simple. I don’t “have it good” to constantly have my identity undermined by another person because they don’t think my gender is real or valid.

Oh this appeals to the linguist in me (no double entendre intended but have fun anyway). I have no problem using “they” in the singular, grammatically speaking.

Small point, the text under the “Yo” cartoon is a bit off. “According to the study, of the 115 students who participated in that phase, 47 used “yo” as an attention-focusing device in one or more of their conversations. Eight out of those students also used “yo” as a third-person pronoun.”

in my experience of using gender neutral pronouns to refer to other people, I prefer entirely new words (ze/hir are my go-to) to the singular they, simply because of the issue of conjugation–I stumble over “they is/they are.”

Hm, with the people I’ve met who go by “they,” verb conjugation has always been led by the pronoun; never heard “they is” or the like. Which makes sense if it’s used just like English speakers have been doing for ages to refer to a person of unknown gender.

I have a question for anyone who uses non-binary pronouns: does it matter which non-binary pronouns someone uses for you? In other words, if someone, for example, refers to you by the singular “they” but personally you prefer “ze/hir”, will that make a difference to you and would you try to correct them? Or would you just be happy they didn’t call you “she/he”?

Same as Sam. I would prefer my pronoun, and if I had the emotional energy, politely remind the person, but I would still prefer that to using binary pronouns for me. I have numerous non-binary friends for whom there is a hierarchy of pronouns they apply (i.e. ze, then they, then he, but definitely not she or some variation upon that theme). Cisgender, less informed extended family might be allowed some of the wider options but best friends would be expected to learn and use the preferred pronoun or maybe strangers can get away with one thing but partners should know better, etc.

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